You can’t stop hate by being hateful. But if your actual goal is to make money from an increase in hate, it’s a very profitable strategy.
Welcome to the world of the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose hypocrisy and anti-Christian extremism we will expose herein.

About Me

Former alcoholic, drug addict and social liberal saved and delivered in prayer in 1986. Today, by the grace of God, an internationally respected pro-family advocate with service in nearly 40 countries.

Who I Really Am

Pastor Scott Lively, J.D., Th.D.

I am a Christian attorney, pastor and international lecturer on family issues who happens to know a lot about the "gay" movement and why it should be opposed by society. My arguments are based in simple logic prodeeding from a thoughtful and reasonable biblical worldview, and, where appropriate, supported by documentation. More importantly, I am not afraid to speak the truth in the face of threats and defamatory accusations, which have grown increasingly more shrill and ridiculous as each prior effort to deter me has failed.

Virtually everything I have written in twenty years of defending and promoting the natural family, variously in Christian and secular terms, is published at my website http://www.defendthefamily.com/ for all the world to see. I have no hidden agenda, no secret strategies and make no compromises so as not to offend "politically correct" sensibilities.

I have created this blog to provide a forum for people who have likewise been defamed or misrepresented as "haters" by the SPLC to tell their side of the story, as well as to provide a sort-of clearing house for the many various articles and other pieces that have been written to expose the SPLC as the anti-Christian hate organization it has become.

We will not defend genuine haters of homosexuals, such as Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps. But if you are a person who balances the self-evident truth that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered and harmful with the equal truth that all human beings have inherent worth and dignity independent of their bad choices, then you have a friend in this blog.

Here are a few links to stories about the SPLC

Disclaimer: HatewatchWatch does not necessarily agree with all of the views of other people and organizations who share our concerns about the SPLC, neither does the posting here of these links necessarily constitute an endorsement of all of the claims, assertions, facts or opinions contained in these articles or the sites on which they are published.

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Tuesday, March 24, 2009

The Price of Free Speech in the Era of “Gay” Power

Last night I learned that one of my upcoming lectures on homosexuality and the “gay” movement may be forced into an alternate venue due to the belief by the original forum’s management that I am a “hate group.” I’m not sure who’s responsible for telling them this, but I suspect it was the Southern Poverty Law Center (the once venerable civil rights champion turned Christian-basher). It might have been the same SPLC staffer who called Mike Spence of the California Republican Assembly yesterday to pressure him to cancel my event, which is being hosted by the CRA’s Temecula, CA chapter. Reportedly, Mr. Spence was told that, among other things that qualify me as a hater, I advocate the lifetime imprisonment of homosexuals.

I do not now, nor have I ever advocated imprisonment of homosexuals. Nor do I, as they suggest on their website, endorse or condone the murder of homosexuals.

The SPLC and its co-conspirators intend that I, upon hearing these outrageous accusations, will rush to prove that I am not a hater, and in the process, compromise all or part of my beliefs and values. That’s what most others have done when faced with far less vicious lies, which is why you can’t find more than a handful of public officials anywhere in the nation willing to affirm the self-evident truth that homosexuality is morally wrong and biologically disordered. They’ve all fallen back to the least vulnerable position and last line of defense of family: the definition of marriage.

It is my tenacious loyalty to the truth and gift of being able to articulate it compellingly that makes the “gays” and their SPLC attack dog hate me, and tell such lies about me. It started years ago with more run-of-the-mill falsehoods, and eventually graduated to the current whoppers. I refuse to be intimidated.

If you stop and think about it, can you name any single person in America who openly disapproves of homosexuality who is not called a hater? Or what Barney Frank called Justice Antonin Scalia recently -- a “homophobe?” That is indeed the purpose of this nonsense word “homophobia:” to define ALL disagreement with the “gay” agenda as irrational hate. A phobia is an anxiety disorder, a form of mental illness, yet the term as they use it applies to everyone who, for any reason, dares to oppose the social legitimization of homosexuality.

“Homophobia” is not a scientific term, but a deviously crafted instrument of psychological manipulation. And its use by the “gay” activists and their allies reveals just how underhanded they are willing to be in the pursuit of their selfish goals. Note that I’m talking about the activists, not people who genuinely want to be left alone to their privacy -- They don’t bother me and I don’t bother them.

The “gay” activists, however, lie about everything. “We’re born that way?” There’s not been one definitive study proving that theory in fifty years of effort, so why do so many people believe it’s been scientifically established? Relentless lying. “We have no agenda?” Has there ever been a more politically aggressive and organized special interest group? -- all the while denying that they even have an agenda? “We just want tolerance?” Yet, far past tolerance and even celebration of “gay” culture in many places, the now politically powerful homosexual movement demands the censorship and punishment of their detractors. Is that proof of an honest commitment to “tolerance” as an ideal, or the cynical manipulation of public sympathy to gain political advantage?

So, by definition, to be a pro-family leader in this new era of “tolerance is to be a constant target of misrepresentation and outright falsehoods designed to poison the well against you so that average people will be reluctant to listen to what you have to say. Who are the real victims here?

Case in point. Why do they say I endorse the murder of homosexuals? This lie has now spread all over the Internet. It started when I came to the rescue of the Russian speaking community of Sacramento when it was being smeared with racist propaganda by the Sacramento Bee newspaper. There had been a fight between a group of Russians and a group of Fijians in a public park in Sacramento. According to reports from the trial, one Fijian man had been “dirty dancing” with other men and the Russians asked them in vain not to do this in front of their children. In the fight that ensued, a Russian man punched the Fijian man once. The man fell, hit his head on a rock, and died that night in the hospital of a brain injury. It was certainly a lamentable tragedy, but an obviously unintended death if not just a freak accident.

However, the Bee and the “gay” activists characterized it as deliberate murder. Worse, they blamed the entire local Russian community of creating this “hate crime” by having been politically active in the preceding months by rallying in large numbers when “gay” issues came before the California legislature which is headquartered in that city. Guilt by association when the association is a common ethnicity is racism. And skewing facts to serve the “gay” political agenda, especially by a trusted organ of the media, is lying by misrepresentation.

In defense of the thousands of innocent Russian immigrants of Sacramento, I therefore made public statements accusing the Bee of racism and misrepresentation. The “gays” and the SPLC then mischaracterized my comments as endorsement of murder. And they continue to do so, even after the trial of the only man arrested in the matter (not the puncher, who apparently fled the country). In the trial the jury deadlocked on the question of whether the incident was even a hate crime, let alone a murder, causing the case to end in a mistrial. The “gays” then embellished the tale, stating falsely that the Russian man was a member of a church I was affiliated with in Sacramento. Not only was that not true, but I never met the man, nor ever gave any hint of approving of or condoning what he did. I was in fact very clear that I was personally grieved by what had occurred. They are liars.

The next year, 2007, I was on a lecture tour of the former Soviet Union, speaking in universities, churches and conferences in about fifty cities through eight countries. At a conference in Novosibirsk (New Siberia) I was relating the story of what had occurred in Sacramento when a small group of 10-12 Russian nationalists (a genuine hate group in a crowd of about 1200 Christians -- it was open to the public) cheered when I said the Fijian man died. I stopped my speech, rebuked them, and then spent the remainder of my time explaining why we should “love the sinner, hate the sin.” However, there was a “gay” activist in the conference who filmed the event, and the next day posted it on YouTube -- except this person edited it so the clip ended with the boors applauding, deliberately misrepresenting the incident. They “lied” by omission, solely to harm me. Thankfully, the conference organizers later published the entire speech on YouTube.

Why do they claim I advocate the imprisonment of homosexuals? That was the story they invented while I was in Uganda earlier this month for a week of lectures, sermons and media appearances in the capital city of Kampala. While there I also addressed a group of members of the Ugandan Parliament in their assembly hall. My purpose was to call for a liberalization of the Ugandan law against homosexuality by shifting the emphasis away from punishment and toward rehabilitation. I analogized it to the example of my own life, citing my choice of optional therapy for alcoholism after being arrested for drunk driving years ago (during which time of therapy I became a Christian and was completely healed of drug and alcohol addiction). I was accompanied at Parliament by an African-American former homosexual man who addressed the issue of reparative therapy and how it had helped him overcome same-sex attraction.

The first reports from Kampala by the “gays” accused me of calling for forced treatment of homosexuals (not true) and later the story was amended to add that I advocated the imprisonment of homosexuals (another lie).

For the record, I approach the homosexual issue first as a Christian theologian, meaning that I assume the Bible is true and a provably superior guide to human behavior to all competing worldviews if the underlying biblical principles relating to any given issue are correctly construed. Secondly, I approach the issue as an attorney which makes me a respecter of empirical evidence, which I attempt to analyze as logical secular thinkers such as Aristotle might. Both approaches reach similar conclusions about homosexuality: that it is, as Pope John Paul said (and Aristotle would affirm), "objectively disordered." In other words, the male/female duality of the human design is self-evident, and deviation from the design is predictably problematic for both individuals and society. (By the way, I am not a Catholic.)

From this premise, I conclude that public policy should actively discourage all sex outside of marriage, not just homosexuality, but that any such policy should be no more intrusive on personal freedom than is necessary for the preservation of a genuinely family-centered society. Where that might, for various reasons in some cultures, include the criminalization of non-marital sexual relationships (as was true in America prior to Kinsey), it should never involve imprisonment in my opinion. Instead, like laws against littering and excess noise, these policies should serve to deter anti-social conduct in as light-handed a manner as possible. That is what I believe and what I teach. If you watch carefully you will see the “gay” activists and the pro-homosexual media twist even this. So be it.

There are many other misrepresentations about me circulating on the Internet, and other examples I could relate of dirty tricks done to me over the past twenty years that would outrage any fair-minded person, but space is limited, and I think I‘ve made my point. But generally speaking, I’m a pretty nice guy with my own share of life challenges like anybody else. What makes me different from most people is that I know a lot about the “gay” agenda and why it should be opposed by society, and that knowledge makes me responsible to speak out no matter how much I get lied about for doing so.

Meanwhile, I have genuine sympathy for homosexuals, whom I believe are already imprisoned. Not in physical jails, but in the mutual self-delusion they share and continually reinforce among themselves that their attraction to persons of the same gender is unconquerable. They are imprisoned by the lies they tell themselves. I don’t want them to be imprisoned. My prayer is that they will be freed, to enjoy the sublime blessing of sexuality in faithful, life-long marriage, as was intended by the one who made us male and female by design.

Help Expose and Oppose the SPLC by Donating to This Project

The Southern Poverty Law Center is doing great harm to the cause of true tolerance by deliberately and continually misrepresenting facts about good people to provoke and sustain fear in its donor base. Then, because they hold themselves out as independent monitors of "hate groups" and are perceived as experts on this topic, their deceitful, deeply flawed and shamefully partisan conclusions are circulated among law enforcement agencies as trustworthy. Worst of all, the SPLC publishes and distributes guidance and curricula to every public school district on the theme of tolerance (its own version), thus poisoning the minds of an entire generation of American children.

Years of public criticism of SPLC's tactics by its victims has not turned them from their cynical but profitable ways. Wider public scrutiny, especially in the pro-family media, will help, but we'll also need to take the harder and more expensive road of going directly to law enforcement and education system officials to try to undo the damage which the SPLC has done.